Antennas and antenna arrays are well known in the art. Conflicts often arise between desired control capabilities or orientation and corresponding desired performance. For example, one typical design approach provides one antenna for each control station. Such antennas are typically installed on a roof or tower. This approach produces minimal insertion loss and tends to maximize coverage for talkaround requirements. On the other hand, this approach also tends to require maximum roof/tower space usage in order to meet mutual interference and antenna pattern requirements (presuming, of course, that adequate installation space exists and that such an approach otherwise accords with local visual aesthetic needs, guidelines, or requirements).
As another example, and particularly when seeking to avoid the above-noted antenna space requirements, hybrid control station combiners are often used to reduce antenna counts. For example, instead of requiring eight separate antennas to support eight control station radios, a combiner may be used to reduce the antenna count to, for example, two antennas. Undesirable trade-offs here include the significant cost of the combiner technology and 11 dB (or more) of combiner insertion loss. These concerns often, in turn, drive usage of highly directional gain antennas to attempt to recoup the losses. Such highly directional gain antennas typically present their own set of corresponding trade-offs and points of complication.